Children of Heroes
by Chicleeblair
Summary: Apparently, Meredith and Jackson both grew up in Boston, and when there is unexplored backstory, I write quick-fic.


It's those eyes that she recognizes. They catch hers from across the cafeteria, and they take her back in time. Memories unfold in the back of her mind for the rest of the day. She says nothing, because everyone cast their judgment on the Mercy West parasites while she was recovering from giving away part of her liver. There's nothing she can say to change their opinions.

The daughter of Ellis Grey was not supposed to speak to the son of Catherine Avery. This, of course, meant that at six, she was found in an OR gallery reading _Goodnight, Moon_ to two-year-old Jackson.

At ten, she paraded him around the Peds floor on Halloween, a mummy wrapped in stolen bandages. They are joined by Sadie Harris, whose father is consulting on a surgery. Meredith doesn't see her again until they start at Dartmouth, but she's pretty sure the sneaking gauze out of supply rooms laid the groundwork for everything that came after.

The vestiges of familial pride kicked in on her twelfth birthday, thanks mostly to the dress her mother bought her for the Harper Avery award banquet. While the adults sipped cocktails, Jackson parroted something his mother said about the Grey Method. One uppercut sent him to the ground.

This, incidentally, was the grounding that led to her refusing to have anything to do with the hospital for years. The next event she attends comes six years later, and is the final barrier between her and access to her mother's car keys for an (ill-fated) spring break to Florida. She's pretty sure that she gives the sixteen-year-old boy in the coat closet his first drink. Possibly even his first kiss, but she's not too sure about that. Those eyes distract her from the actual feel of his lips.

After this, the banquet, the trip, the crashed car, she saw Jackson Avery only twice. He presented her mother with the golden scalpel Harper Avery purchased for the twentieth anniversary of her arrival in Boston, and he bore witness to an epic fight she and her mother had at a conference in Atlanta. In fact, he drove her to the airport to meet Sadie and claimed they were late because he'd gotten lost.

Really, he'd driven around the place twice to let her cry.

The day she flew to New York to pack up the office at the U.N.—the one that her mother was only able to use for six months—she wondered what would have happened if she'd corked her anger at her mother long enough to find out why the boy in the Harvard sweatshirt wanted from her. Something about the concern that flickered onto his face, the way his lips turned down while she shouted at her mother—something made her think he might not be like the guys she usually passed the time with.

Or maybe she wanted to do something that would piss her mother off, and for what? To punish her for getting Alzheimer's? That would make Meredith a terrible person. Not the kind of person med-school bound Jackson Avery would want to remember had helped him with his Biology homework in the Mass Gen lobby. Of course, she was med-school bound, too, now, and in spite of not being the hospital's golden child, she always did have the better grades.

"You realize you're staring at the enemy, right?" Cristina asks over the hospital hamburgers they're eating for dinner. "You're practically having eye sex with him."

"Shut up," Meredith snaps. "I'm married."

"So? You can still ogle the hot cancer cell."

"You, uh, think he's hot?" Lexie asks around a mouth full of French fry. She's blushing. "I mean, not that I do. Or that I don't. I don't have an opinion, I just—"

"Oh for Christ sake," Meredith says. "I do _not_ think Jackson is hot."

"But you're on a first name basis with him?" Alex asks. His expression is knowing under the unshaven look he's been sporting since Izzie left. Instead of lying to him, she stands.

"I have patients to check on. For my husband. I don't have time to think about the relative attractiveness of Mercy Westers. And neither do you," she adds to Lexie. "Aren't you scrubbing in on Mark's rhinoplasty in ten minutes?"

"Yes. Crap. Is it already-? Crap!"

Meredith walks way. Lexie is snorting her milkshake in her haste to chug it. Assuming Jackson has seen that, Lexie's opinion of his hotness won't matter. Not that it does. Lexie is with Mark. And not that Meredith cares. She doesn't care about Jackson Avery.

Except that he meets her eyes again as she heads for the elevator. The two female Mercy Westers are tossing carrots at each other, and Percy has ketchup on the side of his mouth. They're not paying attention to the trajectory of his gaze, and so it is safe for her to quirk her lip up. The same way it was safe to geek out at him about her first dissection in junior high. He raises his Styrofoam cup a centimeter off the table, and she knows he remembers it all, too.

They don't talk about any of it. Her loyalty to Seattle Grace is much more than her loyalty to her mother was, and by the time she's no longer contractually obligated to hate him, they have bigger worries. Only once does she allude to their past.

In the kitchen at a party, she picks up a bottle and hears someone snort behind her. She smirks. "Finally brave enough to drink tequila with me, Jacky?"

"If you ever—"

"Relax. I didn't tell them whose kid you were, did I?"

"No," he admits, taking the bottle from her to fill his shot glass. "Thanks for that."

She shrugs. "Least I could do."

He tilts his head and widens those eyes. "You remember?"

"Everything."

"Me too."

"I know. By the way," she adds, pouring another shot into her glass. "If you hurt my sister, I'll hurt you."

He flinches. She smiles and taps his glass with hers. He really does remember everything.


End file.
